Tangled Tapestry

[You are going to have to wade through this in order to get my meaning. Unless you understand already . . .]

The entire universe, what I know (knew) of it, shifted today. Again!

It began . . . when? maybe last night sometime, but I resisted—I know I did. And then this morning, still I was not tuned into it, the entangled beauty of all life.

But, this afternoon I began to accept. An openness was forced upon me? guided to me? brought to me? I have no idea. But, I know that I began to accept it sometime after 2:50 p.m. today. And in ridiculous fashion, the God who speaks to me in music (really, He does), played Wagner’s Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries as I realized that we are in the presence, always, of the One, and there is a purpose to All. This is not fatalism, not unavoidable destiny, nothing like those trite notions. We do have will, and power within that will, and it is free, and that is indeed a part of our purpose. So we make choices here and there, and then we act and move and work and play and love and live according to those choices. BUT, the One is so benevolent, so kind, so gentle, so completely and thoroughly Love—is Love—that He gives purpose to our will and our power and our freedom and even our choices.

So, I am on route “Shade”, the route formerly known as “This Damn Route”

[oh, I just thought of Prince and I hope he is okay]

listening to Wagner (already I had heard sweetness, all day, from early today), but there was something about the sweeping movement of Ride of the Valkyries that caused me to notice what was already happening, and when I noticed it, then it took full effect. I’d been thinking that I DO NOT WANT TO BE ON ONE ROUTE: I want my five routes back so I can deliver on Prayer, Joy, Gratitude, Salvation, and God every week. And now I am on this damn route which is considered to be one of the longest routes in the city I have heard, but certainly one of the longest in our station, and it is gritty along SE McLoughlin Avenue and the neighborhoods to either side of McLoughlin, everything between Glen Echo and Boardman, plus some. And . . . I am loving it. It took two days for me to get the route down really well (they are required to give you six weeks to learn a route, but why?), and it is flowing nicely. I get to use a lot of driving skills on the busy thoroughfare and there are no nice neighborhoods really, so it is real and earthy and I see Milwaukie as it is. And the great difference is that I am meeting people. Talking to them. I see them every day, not just once a week. Study probability really quickly and then figure that if you see x number of people out of 800 stops each day, but you only do that set of 800 once per week, what are the odds of seeing the same person twice in a month. But, what if you see x number out of the same 800 stops each day, the same set of 800 five times in sequence every week? What did your study tell you? Right. I am seeing many more humans and interacting with them as I deliver. Every day.

Here is what this unbelievably great creator and sustainer of all has done to me: He has pulled me from my head, all of the places I had made into a kind of sacred on those gorgeous routes of Prayer, Joy, Gratitude, Salvation, and God and he has given me everyone, instead. That’s it. All day, every day, I was thinking of you . . . out there reading my thoughts about what I was called to deliver. Here’s what I mean by that. I was immersed in the sacred of those five routes and thought and prayed constantly within that framework, and it was beautiful. And it still is, believe me. Everything I hold dear, all that I love, still resides in the sacred and I will dang sure go back to Ray’s farm to those chestnut trees. But, there is more too. There are others who must hear what I have been called to deliver. You are reading this and understanding, I know, that these words and all of our words and all of our lives and our love must be for everyone. It is the same, but deeper.

Why am I such an infant in getting this? I have no idea, again. No idea, why it took Wagner to give me pause, but I knew it was true when shortly afterward it was Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor that confirmed it. And there is more music from Him too, that spoke, like Melodie from “Souvenir of a Dear Place” that reminds me of those places on the sacred five and validates that entire continuing journey. But for now, in the shade, always on this route called “Shade” I am seeing people, all of them, and perhaps touching their lives in a unique way. How would I know? I am full, so full, from the journey of five, better able to live and move and love now in the real Milwaukie, just outside Portland.

And this damn fine route connects to all the other routes, beyond the five, in a tangled tapestry that is all of life. I do not want to know all of it and understand all of it, because the mystery of the tangled tapestry must remain always beyond, even from within it.

As it is, it is exquisite. And it grows more beautiful every day . . .